


The Last Word

by katsidhe



Series: episode codas [9]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cage Trauma, Episode: s13e23 Let the Good Times Roll, Gen, If I ever write something with no reference to torture please assume the cylons got me, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Season/Series 13, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-08 19:06:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14700351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsidhe/pseuds/katsidhe
Summary: let this memory be the only shred left in his desiccated heaven, and he will be happy.13.23 rewrite.





	1. FOUR

**Author's Note:**

> 13.23 had a lot of potential. A lot of that potential was wasted. 
> 
> So, welcome to my rewrite! Featuring: corpses, confessions, and custody battles. Tune in!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, and Jack, and a corpse, in a church.

Dean—Michael—vanishes. 

Sam's standing in the ruins of an archangel, and his breath is loud and broken in his ringing ears. 

Dean.  _Michael._ Dean’s trapped inside his own mind, fighting and screaming and strapped down and flayed by the sheer power of an archangel.

There's a shuffling noise, behind, and Sam flinches, _terror-what-if_ , but it's Jack. Jack who said, _I love you_ , who tried to give his life for Sam's, who's still bleeding—“Jack, Jack. You're hurt," says Sam. 

"The bleeding's stopped," says Jack, but the pain in his voice is still ragged and hoarse. His face is bloody where Lucifer beat him. Sam pulls Jack's hands away to see the wound in his stomach, and, sure enough, the last remnants of his power flicker a vague gold over the spot, sinking into slowly healing flesh. 

"Jack," says Sam, and some strange sound comes out of his chest, not a sob, not a laugh, and he's pulling Jack in close, wrapping his arms around him, burying his face in his shoulder. Jack's shaking too, and it bruises something deep in Sam, something he didn't realize could still be hurt. 

Sam hurts. It’s nothing new. There are finger marks on his throat and bruises on his face. There's sharp throbbing pain, soul-deep, where Lucifer’d had him one last time. His head, his eardrums, burn from the proximity to the fight and the true voices. His eyes are blurry and sting with white spots, and maybe some deeper damage, because he hadn't looked away or blinked during Lucifer's fiery dying scream. 

The last, he doesn't mind, he doesn't mind at all. Throwing the archangel blade _up_ , watching Dean drive it _in_ , a continuation of that same fluid movement—Lucifer screaming and falling apart, losing it, losing his son, losing everything, then dying desperate—let him go blind, let that image be burnt into his retinas for eternity, let this memory be the only shred left in his desiccated heaven, and he will be happy. 

"Sam," says Jack. He pulls back, grasping Sam's arms, rubbing a little. Sam looks down. Oh, he’s trembling. "Sam. We'll get Dean back," he promises, like Sam's the one who's owed comfort. 

Sam meets Jack’s earnest, sad gaze, then shuts his eyes and nods. Sam doesn’t need comfort. He should. Dean’s a prisoner in his own mind. Sam should be devastated. But he’s not. At least for now, he’s _not_ , and he can’t even _hate_ himself for it.

He breaks away from Jack and turns around, because he needs to look. He needs to look. He opens his eyes and breathes deep, a clear fresh breath all the way to the bottom of his lungs, tasting the dead static in the air. 

 

Sam feels like dancing and Sam feels like throwing up.

He settles for dropping to his knees in the ashy imprint of wings. He draws his fingers through, feeling the tips catch and tear and char on jagged burning edges. He doesn't mind. Embers here and there spark fitfully, searing with unnatural heat. He fumbles, scoops one up with shaking hands and holds it, watching blisters forming on his palm. He doesn't mind. He clenches his fist, slowly, to see the coal crumble and snuff out. He brings a bit to his mouth and tastes it. Just ash. Maybe a tang of ozone, or maybe that's just the leftover power caught thick and stale in the dim air of this church.

He looks at the face. It's not Lucifer's face, no. Sam won’t ever see Lucifer’s face again. That seared-in, unnameable image doesn’t fit the puppet on the ground. This is just another stolen mask. This is the mask from long nightmares, the mask Lucifer preferred. _Consistency_ , he'd said when Sam asked. He touches the cheeks. With one hand, then both. Warm pliable flesh, not yet cooled. The unnatural chill of grace is gone. The eyes are closed, expressionless. No reaction when Sam touches an eyelid. No movement, except when Sam tangles a hand in the hair and pulls and the head lolls sideways. Limp. Still. 

Sam slides his hands down from the slack face, down the neck, firm across the chest. He traces down to the fatal wound. Wets his fingers in the gore. Thinks about Lucifer doing the same, getting handsy with Sam’s corpse, not many days ago. 

But now Sam is alive. Sam is touching this familiar form—it's so familiar, Sam knows every inch, every part, like his own. The touch is so familiar, the scene is so familiar, with the stink of fear and blood and power. Sam's touching him, Sam’s kneeling, Sam's hands are gripped in his shirt, and Sam's hands are slippery with blood—that’s all correct, that’s all normal, and Sam knows exactly how this goes. But. The tableau breaks. It’s never been like this. Never. Because it’s not Sam's blood. It's not Sam's blood.

There's dead man's blood pooling in the wound. Sam touches that, again, the slick red warmth, feels the edges of the gash, pulls back the torn fabric and forces apart the skin with his thumbs to check—yes. It goes all the way through, past skin between the ribs, through the lung, into wet muscle and viscera. 

This wound would have been a starting point, before. Lucifer would have tossed the blade aside and hooked his fingers in, started messing around. Pulled things out or pushed them in. Held it open wide, here, brace, pause, twist, then widen it slowly, watch the lung deflate, watch the gasping and crying and panic of stale instinct. Or started the rip of the skin here, maybe, at this corner, with this convenient flap of tissue, to work on getting it all off in one long piece, like an orange peel.  

But the failures of human anatomy don't matter to an angel. Didn't matter. This was a life-blow direct to the grace, direct to Lucifer's core. A quick death, so quick, so quick. 

Sam wishes he'd killed him. He'd have done it different. Well, actually, no, probably not, he’d have done it the same, because Sam wanted it over more than anything. He knows it was impossible for him to do, though. There's only one weapon Sam's ever seen or heard of that a human could wield to kill an archangel, and Crowley had destroyed the Lance to save Cas's life. That’s why Sam’s never even bothered imagining how he might do it, what it might feel like (at least, not until the rift and blade and the bowl of grace, but that didn’t work out. Or maybe it did, in the end, roundabout.)

Sam’s still got his hands on Lucifer’s abdomen, drifting lower, getting red streaks all over the white shirt. He used to wear a brownish-green one, and a blue jacket. Sam wonders how he got these clothes. Maybe he stole them from a Target. Probably, somebody somewhere died horribly for this cheap white T-shirt. 

Sam’s hands pause on the hips. This—this feels too close to the types of things he had to—things he doesn’t want. Things he got used to, sort of. It’s intimate but he lingers anyway. Tightens his grip, to prove it to himself. There’s no malicious innuendo forthcoming. There’s no licked-lips joke. 

Lucifer's arms are flung out to the sides, a little ways. Not fully spread out, not as if they were staked out or chained, just, fallen. The sleeves of the jacket brush his knuckles. Sam's spent so much time watching those hands. Decades and decades. It’s okay to stare a little longer, he decides. 

Sam grasps the canvas jacket, smearing more blood, and lifts one wrist. The fingers flop. No more from them. The wedding ring, Nick’s ring, a relic Lucifer never bothered to edit from his flesh illusion, is cold and dull. He remembers it glinting pale blue in the eldritch light of the Cage. He knows the feeling of that band of cool metal crushed hard against his cheek, or pressed up in his open guts. Sam knows the marks it makes in his skin—incidental, superficial, not even intentional. Lucifer probably never even noticed he still wore it.

Sam's gory hands slip the first few times he tries to tug the ring off, but he eventually manages the task. And really, really, Sam could take the finger too. Digits come off easy, he knows. He's got a knife. He won't, and he doesn't. (But he wonders, a little bit, what Rowena could accomplish with a trophy like that.)

The gold ring is small and ordinary. A plain band. Sam checks the inside—there’s an inscription. Just a date, in simple script: _June-10-2003_. He never knew that. All those years and he’d never even wondered. And he thought he’d wondered about everything, exhausted everything, in that place. 

"Sam?"

Sam flinches, again, and jerks around, nearly falling flat on his ass in archangel ash. But it's just Jack, confused and young and injured, who's watching him mess with his father’s corpse. 

“He's gone," Sam explains. He can feel himself smiling. He’s a little afraid his face might split open at the edges. He doesn’t want it to, because he’s had that done, and it hurts, but he can’t stop the grin.

“He’s gone,” Jack parrots back. He approaches Sam slowly. He’s not smiling.

Why not? Doesn’t he understand?

“Don’t you understand?” Sam asks. He holds up the blood-streaked ring for Jack to see. He doesn’t know why he does it. The only person it mattered to is someone Sam never knew, someone long, long gone. It’s not like this tiny thing matters at all to Sam or Lucifer. 

And certainly not to Jack, whose confusion is rapidly turning into alarm. "Are you okay?"

"I'm okay," says Sam, and the unexpected truth in the words makes him buckle, wheezing with laughter, clutching the ring that belonged to Lucifer’s long-dead victim close to his chest. 

He bows his head and lets his hair fall to cover his face. He crumples all the way down to his elbows and knees next to Lucifer, an act as ancient and natural as breathing. He presses his forehead into the sharp ashy ruins of burnt feathers, inhales deeply. For a second he holds his breath, but then he remembers: no one to please or impress here. No appeasement, no choking down words, nothing to avoid. Sam lets himself exhale a noise he can’t describe, not a keen or a sob or a whoop, but something raw and jagged torn from somewhere very, very deep.

 

A soft touch on his shoulder jolts him upright, but this time he knows it’s Jack. 

“Sam,” says Jack. 

“You’re crying.” says Jack. His voice is thick with tears.

“I’m okay,” says Sam again. Jack’s right. He can feel the wetness on his cheeks. But he means it. “It’s okay, Jack, it’s gonna be okay.”

 

After a moment, Sam sticks his hands in the ash one more time, to lever himself to his feet. Jack tucks himself close, and together they stagger to the doors of the church. They open onto cracked stone stairs, an overgrown courtyard, and a cloudless evening sky. 

Sam pulls out his cell, and his GPS says they’re in Georgia. 

He calls Rowena. 

“Hello, Samuel,” she purrs. “Miss me already, dearie?"

“Rowena,” he croaks. His voice is cracked and sounds strange. 

“Sam?” she says, tone suddenly serious. 

“Lucifer—“ and he breaks off. He can't say it, all of a sudden. There’s an intake of breath on the other end of the line. 

“No,” Rowena says, soft, then louder, “no, no more of _him_ , I’ll not allow it, Sam, where are you?”

“Rowena. Lucifer is dead,” says Sam, and it’s the first time he’s said those three words together. 

She makes a wounded sound, and then she’s laughing, and Sam starts laughing again too. She says, “I’ll be there in a wink."

Sam dials Mom next and barely remembers what he says. He stutters, the relevant details, Dean stabbed Lucifer, Michael took Dean, Rowena’s giving them a lift. There’s so much left to fix.

He finds a sink in a back room and cleans his hands, half-reluctant. But it’s worth it, so that he can wash Jack’s face, clean and dress his wounds in the free air. Jack doesn’t deserve to be touched by any part of Lucifer. 

For awhile after that, he and Jack sit quietly together on the steps. Sam keeps the doors open, so that he can periodically glance behind at the scene inside the church. 

But mostly, they watch the moon rise.


	2. ONE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucifer tries to convince Jack, but things go a little differently.

Lucifer’s come to take Jack. 

Over and over the familiar terror spikes, over and over another shot of panic and adrenaline to the heart, but Sam's not surprised. He’s just exhausted, and mute, and nauseated; Lucifer uses the same old tired lines with the kind of confidence that comes from being too powerful to have heard of caution.

But then Michael—half-destroyed Michael—reveals just a little too much, and the winds begin to shift. 

Lucifer scrambles to recover. “Let’s slow down, because I’m not currently the bad guy, here.”

Dean, half-choked, pushed too far, barks a laugh full of murder, incredulous and insane. “Tell that to Sam, you fucking p—“ Lucifer doesn’t bother to snap his fingers, just jerks his chin impatiently, and Dean’s struck dumb mid-insult. 

“Young ears around," says Lucifer, with an offended sniff, "watch the language.”

“Wait. Sam? What does he mean?” asks Jack, switching gears to bafflement.

Sam, frozen, glances sideways. Lucifer tilts his head, then grins and raises an eyebrow. He shrugs, _your move_.

Sam’s mouth goes dry. 

"You don’t know what he is,” he manages finally, weakly, to Jack’s shoes ( _which are velcro, because no one’s taught him to tie sneakers properly—)_

“You said that before! What do you mean?” snaps Jack, all curdled desperate frustration. 

“Yeah, Sammy. What do you _mean_?” Lucifer’s eyes crinkle at the edges with the force of his barely suppressed mirth. He’s making no move to intervene.

He puts a hand on Jack’s shoulder. 

Sam’s throat tightens and Lucifer’s smile broadens, because he's playing a game he knows he won a long time ago. "Please, Sam, if you’re such an expert, share with the class. What are you afraid of?” 

Jack glances back at him, and Lucifer folds his expression back into a grin faint enough to be polite and curious, guileless and open, eyes like chips of blue ice. One hand is on Jack’s arm but the other lifts a little, fingers crooked vaguely up. Almost imperceptible, but Sam sees.

The silence stretches, heavy, but Sam’s got no words. He’s nailed down. They're a heartbeat away from guts painting the ceiling. 

He tastes blood, grinds his teeth further into his cheek to squeeze down tears. Looks at Lucifer’s hand and feels Dean’s eyes on him, lets shame sink the leaden weight in his stomach a few degrees lower.

Lucifer whistles, low and impressed. “ _Wow_. Eloquent. Glad we got that sorted out. Jack, chop chop, let’s boogie.”

Sam forces himself to meet Jack’s eyes. “Jack, just _run_. He’ll—I know him, please trust me—” and then Lucifer's tired of Sam’s voice, too.

"Oh, shut up." He still sounds amused but Sam knows the brief good humor is gone. (He swallows to check; he still has vocal cords.)

Jack stares at Sam, then turns and shakes off Lucifer’s hand, frowning. “What did you—”

Lucifer hisses through his teeth, impatient, says smoothly, “It's fine, all good, Jack, don't worry. I was being the bigger person here, letting go of some old grudges, but I guess Sam's not as—”

“ _What grudges_?” growls Jack, and he’s a lost kid thrown so far in the deep end he doesn’t even know he should be grasping for a lifeline. 

Lucifer exhales, gives Sam a look that’s a promise, pastes the smile back on. “Come on, man! Sam’s a hater. He’d say anything to get you on his side. Let’s split, okay?”

The wall’s pressing bruises into Sam’s back; Jack blinks at him, horror and dawning realization. "What did you do to Sam?”

"Pffft, ancient history. Grownup stuff, you'll learn when you're older,” says Lucifer, flicking a dismissive hand, “nothing you’d care about, nothing he didn't say _yes_ to—“

"Tell the  _truth_!" Jack shouts, and he reaches out with his hand and his power, irises glowing. 

Lucifer's eyes light up to match, golden cracks spreading out like veins. “—Sam’s my little bitch," he says, dreamlike, and ice pours down Sam's spine. "He ruined my plans and shoved me down and trapped me in that Cage again, so I hurt him in ways human languages don't have words for. I made him beg and cry and apologize for decades and decades. I ripped apart his body and his mind, and I squished my fingers around in his soul. It was warm, and wet, and I liked it, but the best parts? Were when he told me he liked it, too.”

Sam's knees go weak against the wall.

Jack drops his hand and staggers a step back, gaping; Lucifer blinks and shakes his head.

“No,” Sam croaks, without meaning to; his eyes are burning; apparently Jack’s trick gave him speech back. Lucifer's gaze snaps to Sam, drawn like a magnet, always, always. Sam stares at the floor and doesn’t want to know what’s showing on his face, what hideous truth Jack’s seeing.

"You’re not my father,” chokes Jack, through tears. “You're a monster!"

Lucifer turns and  _howls_ _._ It’s the sound he made when they fell. Sam screams too, crumpling to the floor and covering his ears, the familiar bone deep pain of an archangel's true voice like a drill through the eyesocket. 

When it stops, Sam clings to the wall to drag himself upright. Dean is still standing, staring at Lucifer, and Sam jerks his eyes away because he can't handle his brother's expression. Across the room, Cas clutches his blade, pale and resolute. 

Lucifer is as furious as Sam’s ever seen him, but he breathes deep and smoothes his features into something far worse, a slack blank mask, a prelude. "Okay. I tried with you, Jack. I really, really tried with you.”

Jack hasn’t moved or buckled; he’s shaking, face twisted in raw pain and fury. “Everything you told me was a lie!”

“Because I told you what you wanted to hear!”

“You _tortured_ Sam!” Jack cries, and his voice breaks on the word. 

“So I hurt him. Big deal! He hurt me first! He _betrayed_ me,” Lucifer spits. “Who  _cares_ , Jack.” 

“I care,” sobs Jack, “you hurt him, I care, I care!”

“Why?" Lucifer looks over to Sam again, teeth bared and eyes wild, and for a moment the rattle of chains cuts through everything, a sense-memory drawn from sheer expectation. "He’s just a human!”

“So am I!”

“Yeah? That’s your problem. You’re too much like your mewling mother.” Lucifer advances on Jack. 

Sam pushes himself off the wall. There’s a numb ringing in his ears, hands tingling, the same deep inevitability he felt at Stull. 

“Stay back, I’ll handle him!” Jack’s voice doesn’t quaver. He holds out his hand in grim concentration.

“Will you?” Whip-quick, Lucifer knocks the arm aside, twisting Jack's wrist up and back. "Oh, buddy. We could've remade the universe together. But if you don't want to? I don't need you." 

He sighs, drops his conjured blade into his hand, and Sam knows what's going to happen an instant before it does. 

”I just need your power." Lucifer flicks the brass edge across Jack's throat, and Jack gasps, agonized, as a thick wisp of grace escapes. 

Lucifer sucks in the white energy, smacks his lips together, fist in Jack's collar the only thing keeping the kid upright. “It’s okay. We can have still something, you and me. Let's discuss our future, son."

Jack's eyes are glassy, his mouth is slack, and Sam is not leaving him alone. He grabs Jack’s shoulder and the heavy flap of wings carries them both away.


	3. TWO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, and Jack, and Lucifer, in a church. AKA the world's messiest custody battle.

Sam lands hard, barely catching himself on his forearms before his nose hits the marble floor. A pattern of cream and yellow and blue slides into focus, then he’s scrambling up to his knees in a dim, dusty church. His throat is caught in his chest and he does not think, not at all.

Lucifer, of course, is standing over him. “Really, Sam? Hitching a ride? I mean, do you ever quit?"

Jack's stock still a few yards away, pale face streaked with tears. There’s nothing left to say. “Go to Hell,” says Sam.  

“Hell, yeah.” Lucifer kicks him in the face. “Been there, done that.”

He smacks Sam around a bit, warming up; could kill or maim him with one blow, but instead smashes his ankle, bruises a kidney, snaps a few ribs. Blood speckles the marble. There’s no sound but his gasps and grunts and the impact of flesh and bone. When he tries to twist away, Lucifer drags him over to pin him back against the side of a table—no, altar. Sam shudders and struggles, panting with adrenaline and numb, numb terror. His mind is white static. 

“Jack and I were gonna have some father-son bonding time, but honestly, I’m glad you came along. I value your input.” Lucifer slides his hand down, digging nails in over the heart. Pauses, to tip Sam’s face up. Then his hand sears with stolen grace, and the wrench of icy power has Sam screaming in earnest.

“Stop!” yells Jack. 

Lucifer ignores him, leaning in close, grip crushing, eyes bright and hungry. “See, since you can probably come up with some good reasons dear Jack should listen to me. He's a bit stubborn. Maybe he’ll take it easier from you.” 

Sam gasps, gags on the pain and spits up blood. Hurts, god, hurts. His ears are ringing, head spinning, concussed or shock? He pinches his lips shut and shakes his head, pushing feebly at Lucifer’s shoulder. 

“No? You’re right, much better to show him. Are you a visual learner, Jack?” He digs his fingers into Sam’s elbow and destroys the joint with a popping _crunch_ ; Sam screams again. 

“Stop it!” Jack’s been crying steadily, but now he’s screaming too, “stop it, stop it, please, you’re hurting him—”

“ _Hurting_ him? Nah, haven’t started yet. This is just foreplay, right, bunk buddy?” Lucifer heaves him up by the collar. But the other hand is curling in a familiar motion—no no nonono—

“— _no_ ,” chokes Sam, numbness gone in a bolt of violent panic, but Lucifer grins at him and forces fingers deep between his ribs, through his body, into his soul. 

Sam goes blind with mind-altering, intimate agony. Shattering pressure breaks him open, then it’s convulsize pain as jagged nails tear into the raw tender parts of him, ripping them out and stripping them naked and flaying them alive, and it will never get better, it will last unflagging for hours, weeks, longer, as long as he wants, until Sam can’t form words, can’t form thoughts that aren’t pleas and promises, is left with only what’s at the shredded core of who he is: agony and terror and Lucifer, always Lucifer. 

And over the screaming, someone’s saying, hysterically, “—please, _please_ , no, no, no! Sam, Sam, SAM! Stop, stop, please, stop it, please, stopstopstop, don’t hurt him, don’t, I’ll do anything—I’ll—”

“You’ll what _?_ Listen to sense?”

Oh. It’s Jack, not him, who’s weeping and begging. “Y-yes, yes, anything, please, just, stop it!”

Lucifer stops it; Sam crumples to the ground at his feet. Visceral pain twists through his lungs with every sobbing breath. Somehow, that particular torment gets worse, gets more, gets deeper, every single fucking time. He hugs shaking arms around his chest (it’s not actually torn open; just feels that way) and presses his forehead against the cool marble, tasting iron and sour bile. 

It’s a close thing, but he skips the tears of gratitude. (Because now that it’s passed, he wishes Jack had said nothing; because neither of them will like what’s coming.)

While Sam tries to control the twitching aftershocks, Lucifer talks. “Great! Great, that’s great, Jack. Let’s be reasonable. Let’s talk about your savior, here, the human you’re choosing over your own father—did you know Sam agreed to end the world with me, before he got cold feet?” 

“You—you tried to end the world?” The desperate fear and betrayal in Jack’s voice makes the knot of curdled hatred in Sam’s heart clench impossibly tighter. 

“ _We_ tried. And only so I could make it better,” explains Lucifer. “With Sam. Sam and I had a real connection, before he threw it all away. Star-crossed. Made for each other, in every sense, much as he likes to pretend otherwise.”

“But you told me he stopped you, and you t-tortured him,” Jack stutters, low and fearful. 

“Not the full story, but whatever.” Impatient, Lucifer steamrollers onwards. “Point is, he’s not perfect, just like me. You know he’s made a life mission out of killing our kind, right? He's a hunter, kiddo, do you understand what that means?”

There’s a heavy pause. “S-saving people,” Jack says warily. 

“Oh, _buddy_ ,” voice dripping with sympathy, “ _no_ , it means slaughtering everything that isn’t human enough. Pretending genocide is a worthy cause.”

Sam laughs. He accepts the perfunctory kick to his broken ribs with good grace. 

“No, Sam saves people,” insists Jack, voice still thick and choked but—oh, no—strengthening with righteous indignation. “He saved me! He taught me that I can choose to be good, no matter how I was born.”

“Jack, d-don’t,” Sam manages, teeth gritted through another involuntary muscle spasm. Lucifer kicks him harder this time.

“Oh, Sammy talks a good game, but he'd give you up in a heartbeat to save Dean.”

“I trust him! He’s protected me over and over. He c-cares about me. Unlike you!” 

_Shut up,_ Sam thinks, _shut up shut up shut up_ , but he can’t do anything besides shake his head and stare at the flower patterns in the marble floor and try to stop wheezing. 

“You’re really not gonna give him up, huh,” and the tone is hideously mild.  

“Sam is my _real_ father,” says Jack defiantly. 

Sam squeezes his eyes shut, squeezes himself further down against the ground, rasps in another painful breath. His fingers curl and uncurl against the polished stone.

Lucifer's voice goes low and soft. “ _Is_ he, now.”

In the fraught moment of silence, Sam tastes the ozone of gathering power. He bites into his cheek and braces—

Except no pain comes. For an instant he’s baffled at the reprieve. 

And then _, Jack_ screams. 

Sam jerks his head up in time to see Lucifer punch Jack into the ground and haul him back up by the neck. Jack clutches at Lucifer’s arm in terror and agony, his wide eyes meet Sam’s, his nose is bleeding, he’s choking.

Sam jolts upright, and in a blink of rage he’s limping over and pulling at Lucifer’s shoulder. Predictably, a burst of pain blasts him back into the floor, broken bones grating nauseatingly, but he hears Jack heave in a breath.

“Wow, look who’s growing a spine! Daddy Sammy to the rescue!” Lucifer wraps a hand around the fresh bruises on Sam’s neck and drags him up to his knees. “But, uh, this is your cue to explain to _my_ son that he's _mine_.”

“He's his own person,” Sam gasps. “He's not yours.”

Lucifer squeezes his broken elbow, making Sam hiss and twist. “Mmm, but he is mine, and you know it. Honestly, how can you of all people stand to look at him, knowing that? And instead you’ve gone mother hen. Is there a name for that level of sheer masochistic dysfunction? It’s _got_ to have a page in the psych manual, we can call it Sam Syndrome, file it right next to Stockholm, your other favorite—”

“He's nothing like you,” Sam says. Behind Lucifer, Jack stumbles back to his feet, rubbing his chest and coughing.

Lucifer tilts his head. “Seriously? He’s hurt people. He’s killed them! He's got more blood on his hands than I did, at his age!”

Sam meets Jack’s eyes. “I don't care. He's family." And he resolutely does not think about the loaded gun in that word.

“Family, huh? Well, that certainly explains your sudden blanket forgiveness policy on murder,” muses Lucifer. He wrinkles his nose in false bafflement. “You sure know how to pick ‘em. I mean, Dean tried to bash your brains in with a hammer and you _still_ didn't get a divorce.” 

Sam coughs a laugh. “Talk about easy targets. You that short on ideas?”

Lucifer breaks his arm, which Sam is willing to take as a yes. “I’m just saying, with families like yours—like ours—who needs enemies? When do you think Jack’ll start punching you around, or declare himself God, or stuff a demon and an angel up inside you, or chain you down to a cot while you beg—”

“Nothing you say or do is gonna change my mind about him. Might as well kill me.” 

Lucifer lets Sam go and stares at him for a long, long moment, reptile-flat. Sam stays kneeling, trembling and hurting and afraid, but he’s too far gone to _really_ feel it. No adrenaline left, nerves wrung dry. There's not much left to lose. Lucifer’s watching him and Sam knows he’s enjoying his silent obstinant terror, and then his mouth quirks and for a moment Sam hopes—

Lucifer nods as if he’s decided something, turns back to Jack, who’s been watching in frozen horror. “And is that how you feel, son? Would you also rather die than give your old man a chance?”

Jack nods, mutely. 

Lucifer snaps, and a meathook on a chain rattles into existence, dangling from the ceiling. 

Sam's heart sinks. “Oh yeah, you’ve definitely changed,” he croaks, giddy. As if there's something more to fear than what's already here, what's already going to happen. “You still actually think  _this_  is how to make your problems go away.”

“Sam, up.”

Sam just spits blood on the floor and looks at him. He couldn't stand if he wanted to.

Surprisingly, Lucifer doesn’t respond or punish, just drags him up by his hair until Sam’s propped upright on his knees facing Jack. He braces Sam’s back against his thighs with an arm like an iron bar across his chest, and then Sam’s keening and twisting and gritting his teeth while the hook scrapes through the meat of his shoulder. 

Jack makes a strangled noise, takes a step towards Sam, stops, says desperately, “I won’t forgive you if you do this to him!”

Lucifer’s breathing hard and uneven in his ear. Something sharp digs into the outer corner of Sam’s eyelid—the archangel blade. 

“ _Forgive_? Jack, my dad locked me up and left me for millenia,” Lucifer says, agreeable and smooth and gentle, as if he isn’t trembling with rage and something else, something Sam’s seen him show only rarely: bereft jagged grief. “My brothers and sisters tried to kill me, a lot. I don’t need your _forgiveness_. Family's worth _nothing_. And I'm going to prove it to you." 

Jack stares at Sam and the hook and the knife, too horrified to respond. 

Sam feels himself grinning. "What, by torturing me to death? Go ahead. No one's stopping you. Think it’ll make him love you?" The incredulity is like a drug. He licks at the trail of blood oozing down his cheek.

Lucifer's grip tightens past the point of bruising. The tip of the blade wavers with uneven pressure; Sam can feel him shaking, and that’s more terrifying than any number of sharp objects, because Lucifer’s hands are always, _always_ steady. Not now. He’s veering from tack to tack, rudderless, barely beginning one strategy before dropping it for another. He’s unhinged. 

Abruptly, Lucifer releases Sam and steps away, and that too is terrifying. “Fine. Know what? I’m not gonna kill you.” He nods at Jack. “He is." 

"What?" whispers Jack. Sam just sways and clings to the chain.

Lucifer tosses his blade to the ground. The harsh clank of metal on marble brings the church back into sharp focus. “Jack, you’ve shown me you’re just not responsible enough to have pets. Maybe in a few centuries. But right here? Right now? Pick up that knife and put down your _dog_ , or watch me shred him into dog food.”

Jack just looks at Sam, face pale and tight. “No, no, no,” he grits out, “no, no, no.”

“It’s okay,” murmurs Sam, and he’s lying if the relief isn’t incredible, “Jack, it’s okay, it’s okay, just do it, I’m asking you to do it, okay, you can do it, it’s not your fault.”

“I can’t,” sobs Jack, “Sam, I’m sorry, please, Lucifer, I won’t, I can’t.”

“You can’t? You need another object lesson?” hisses Lucifer.

“No, I _can’t_! I’d rather die! This isn’t fair, this isn’t _fair_!” yells Jack, anguished anger overtaking the fear. 

Lucifer raises a hand, Sam and Jack both cringe—but then he pauses. The fury drains out of his face. He smiles. “Actually, you’re right, Jack. It isn’t fair.”

Sam screams as the chain yanks him to his feet. Then Lucifer snaps: the metal in his shoulder vanishes; icy grace pinches fresh wounds closed; his broken bones splinter back together in a flood of shuddering agony. 

“New plan. One of you lives, one of you dies. You choose. Now _that’s_ fair.”

Sam blinks, shivers with cold and shock and leftover pain. Glances down at the blade, then at Jack. “No.” 

“Thought you might say that,” says Lucifer. He licks his lips, staring between Jack and Sam, one to the other. The uncertain desperation of just moments before has been replaced by a hungry, cheerful calm. “So here’s the kicker. If you don’t kill my son, tiger, _I won’t either_. _”_

The release of fatalism evaporates. 

The world goes pale and vague and remote. 

Sam’s shivering doubles. “No. He’s a kid, he doesn’t understand—please, Lucifer, he doesn’t—you don’t have to—”

Lucifer sighs heavily. “I didn’t want to. But if he won’t love me, he _will_ worship me.”

“I won’t,” snarls Jack. “Not ever!”

“What do you think, Sam, how long till he learns obedience? I’ll put the over-under at five years. He seems malleable.” Lucifer smiles mock-rueful, ruffles Sam’s hair, lets go and steps back against the wall. 

There’s a rushing in Sam’s ears. “You. But even if I killed him, you’d just bring him back.”

Lucifer shrugs. “Nah. I don’t even know if that’s possible. And I can always just make more kids. Humans, so  _easy_ , am I right?”

Sam’s stomach turns. He shakes his head, denial denial denial, please God no, but that’s the ball game, and they both know it. Just one fucking line from him, and Sam’s gonna do it. _Sam_ is easy. Lucifer can rewire him with a word. 

And he should have seen it coming. Lucifer never lets him escape to the dark numbness of despair for long, always drags him back to the knife-edge of coherence with a new game to play, a new choice Sam has to make, with the reminder that there’s always further to fall. Lucifer stacks the deck, over and over, until he finds the winning hand—the one that makes Sam lose the most. 

Sam bends and picks up the knife. This weapon that could kill an archangel is cool and hard and surprisingly light in his hand. Doesn't feel special, no lightning or magic, no touch of the cosmos. He has never wanted anything so badly or so uselessly as to drive it into Lucifer’s heart. 

Jack says, “Sam?”

Lucifer laughs. He’s delighted. He’s finally pushed enough buttons to get a response he likes. “See, Jack? So much for family, huh? Humans are flawed, base, _murderous_. Hardwired to fall. All they need is an excuse.” 

“Jack,” begins Sam. His voice is blurring. His hands are unsteady. He’s sick, sick, sick. “I’m so sorry, but you don’t know what he’ll do.”

Sam’s used to impossible games. ( _Which organ this morning, liver or heart_?) By now it comes so easily, choosing. ( _Which death today, irons or whip?_ ) Lucifer likes him complicit. ( _Which face tonight, Dean or Jess?_ ) 

“Su-ure, Sam, try to dress it up all you like,” Lucifer continues, oozing mock disgust, “but Jack, just _look_ at him. Your saint, your idol, your chosen pops. He’s gonna kill you, and he’s standing there holding that pigsticker pretending it’s for your own good!”

Jack’s staring at Sam. His nose is broken and bleeding, his face is bone-white and screwed up from crying. He’s hunched and pale and so, so young. 

Sam drops his eyes. His voice cracks. “I’m sorry.” 

“Ah, tough love, am I right?” sneers Lucifer.

What was he hoping to win for Jack by coming along? Protection? Laughable. A distraction? Like Lucifer can’t multitask. Company? Sam’s just another dagger to turn against him. 

“Sam?” asks Jack again. “Sam.”

“And you think, you _really_ think he's better than me." And under Lucifer’s victory, true hurt slices through his tone, raw and bereft and seething. 

Jack totters forward and reaches out, grasping Sam’s forearms, pulling him closer, pulling the knife closer. “It’s okay, Sam, it’s okay, please, I understand, it's better this way, this was my fault, I should never have—I d-don’t blame you.” He’s shaking. 

This kid is shaking, and he’s trying to comfort Sam, while Sam—while Sam is—

No, no, no, _fuck_ this, this _isn’t_ the fucking Cage. This isn’t just another meaningless dilemma for Lucifer’s entertainment. Jack doesn’t belong in this twisted nightmare logic, this hideous injustice. There’s no way out for Sam, he knew that when he jumped, but Sam chose this back in Stull. Jack didn’t. 

“No,” Sam says, and yanks the blade back. He drops it with a clatter and does not think about what comes next. 

“Uh, excuse me?”

Sam puts his chin up, rides the burst of masochistic courage to look Lucifer in the eye while he still can. He thinks about Limbo two years ago, Rowena and the torchlight and the false cage, the place where Sam first remembered what it felt like to say that word to him and have it _mean_ something.

And Sam says it again, says, “ _No_. No, this is pointless. No more games. I’m not playing, not anymore. Not with him.”

“Not even to protect him?”

“Fuck you,” spits Sam, “ _fuck_  you. Nothing I do can protect him.”

Lucifer folds his arms across his chest, nods thoughtfully. “It's very righteous, isn't it, to pretend that's true? Sam Winchester, taking the third option! Refusing to deal!  _Not today, Satan!_ That way the storybook hero doesn't have to make any messy decisions, nothing to besmirch his, ahem, untarnished virtue. No regard for truth or consequences, but who cares, right?”

Sam swallows back tears and Lucifer smiles, so damn certain of his victory (because he knows Sam remembers every time he ever tried this, he knows Sam can still feel it, smell touch taste it).

“But if that's your decision, look, I'll respect it! Option three: I kill him, slow, while you watch. A long, long time from now, Jack dies cursing your name. Then I kill you, then the universe. To be clear, that's what you want? That's your choice?”

Sam shakes his head, lets the fury burn through him and prickle hot in his eyes. “This isn't my choice. You'll do what you want. Like you always do.”

And the smile falls away, Lucifer’s face goes blank and unanimated, a cardboard cutout, he grabs Sam’s collar, and for a second Sam sees a flash of the ancient eldritch thing behind the mask, as vast and terrible as a star. “What _I_ want? You've taken everything else, you will not take him from me, I'll rip both of you to shreds first. I'll rip the _universe_ to shreds—”

There’s a scraping noise: Jack’s picked up the blade. 

Lucifer’s head snaps to him. “Son? Are you seeing reason?”

Jack looks straight at Lucifer and holds his gaze, ashen but resolute. “Yes. I see now—I’ll end it. You don’t have to hurt him.”

“You’ll do it!” Lucifer’s expression flashes with badly hidden relief. He shoots Sam a triumphant smirk, releases him and dusts his hands off. “Go ahead then, son. Right in the heart, and we can close this messy chapter forever.”

Jack takes a deep breath. “Sam, I love you.” 

Sam meets Jack’s pained smile, sees the way he’s holding the knife: horrified understanding slots into place a second too late. 

Jack turns the blade on himself and begins to press it into his stomach. 

“No, Jack, nono—”

“Son, don’t _dare_ —”

There’s a blinding, ear-splitting shriek, the marble floor cracks, a percussive wail of force shatters every window. Jack drops the knife and spins around. Lucifer, caught off-guard, turns. Sam clutches at his ears and clenches his teeth against the sensory overload of an archangel’s true voice, looks up, and sees—

“ _Dean_?”


	4. THREE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, and Jack, and Lucifer, and Dean, and Michael, in a church. AKA, probably all these people can't fit in this church. Might need to clear some out.

Great black wings flare out against the church doors; the air charges with static and ozone and flickering lightning. Dean’s eyes blaze blue-white. A horrible alien glimpse of an archangel’s face. 

Sam’s tongue cleaves to the roof of his mouth. 

No. It’s not Dean.

_Michael_ has Dean.

Sam thought he was fresh out of feeling. He thought there was no more room for shock or horror or grief, but god, oh _god_ , not Dean, not Dean too. 

Michael blinks, and something _shifts_ , slots into place, and, and— 

“Hiya, Sammy,” and it’s Dean. 

Somehow, impossibly, it’s _Dean_ , layered over an archangel, a perfect fit. Sam swallows hard against the sense memory: what it felt like in the driver’s seat of Lucifer’s vast timeless frostbite grace, eye-of-a-hurricane, eye-of-eternity, the breathless grasp of power beyond imagining, chained not to a comet but to a hideous beautiful _star_. 

Dean’s eyes flick over Sam, over Jack, both in more or less one piece, then he’s focused back on Lucifer. 

“You let my brother in,” and if Sam needed more evidence that Dean’s at the wheel, Lucifer’s astonishment is confirmation enough. 

Dean smirks, smooth and murderous and defiant. “Yeah, well, it turns out we had something in common. We both want to gut your ass.”

Sam almost laughs, because, seriously, his big brother come to save him from the Devil? It’s something straight out of a childish daydream. Feels real, though, by his own uncertain yardstick. His day has been otherwise shitty enough. He aches enough. 

Dean—Michael— _Dean_ erupts in a blaze of gracelight. An instant later, Lucifer does the same. 

Sam turns his head away, presses Jack’s hands into the wound in his stomach, and yanks them both against the wall, crunching over shattered glass, as far away as they can get from the archangels in the cramped space of the nave.

The tension Sam feels isn’t just his own fear. There’s a dreadful, taut energy buzzing through his teeth, popping in his ears. He remembers it with a thrill of dull horror. 

Lucifer and Michael,  _fighting_. 

The first blow comes with a deafening roll of thunder and a glowing core like the blossoming heart of a sun. 

The edges of the shuddering power roil outward in a ripple of pure death. 

Sam cowers, feels the familiar grace break over and through him like the crest of a sickening wave, and he knows if he were anyone else, from any other bloodline than his wretched own, he’d be past dead, fried up like a mouse in a microwave. Instead he covers his head with his arms and screams. 

There’s a fuzzy pop like a speaker blew out, and abruptly the burning radiation slackens to a muffled roar, a mild humming sunburn; the blinding light clicks down to bearable. 

Sam opens his eyes and screams again, pure reaction, because an angel’s wings are spread over him like terror, hemming him in, a crackling black void, a hideous agonizing embrace, no no. Except, there’s no pain. And there’s a warm arm around his shoulders. 

Warm. Human. No, not quite. It’s Jack, clutching him close and shielding them both with the trembling shadow of other-planar wings. His eyes glow gold, he’s gritting his teeth in a frown of ferocious effort and pressing a hand tense against his still-bleeding wound. Sam grips him tighter and together they stare out beyond the tight cocoon, to where Michael—Dean—and Lucifer are circling. Warming up. 

Sam wonders how far out that first blast went. He really hopes Lucifer picked a church somewhere with a low population density. 

“Come to save your princess, Dean?” Lucifer’s tone is even, teasing, calculated. Looking for an opening. “Sam’s very damsel-y, I’ll give him that. It’s the hair. Or the girlish shrieks.”

Another blow, another juddering messy wave of radiant power, as Lucifer lashes out again. God, this fight needs to end before it nukes the county, or more.

“Yeah, just keep digging that grave,” snarls Dean. “You’ve got payback coming.”

“Funny, I thought you two were trying to _avoid_ this prize fight,” drawls Lucifer. “Who knew a little kidnapping was all I needed to change your mind?”

Maybe it’s his raging turmoil or his carelessness, maybe it’s the unfamiliarity of the grace he cannibalized from Jack, maybe it’s his imperfect vessel, but Lucifer’s blows keep going wide—ragged jet engine bursts of uncontrolled power that Dean and Michael dodge easily. And Sam can sense the way Dean’s trying to limit the collateral damage. His jabs of force are focused, sharp and thin, the balanced finesse of a fencing blade parrying the crude energy of Lucifer’s wide-bore cannon. 

“This isn’t a fight. It’s an execution,” says Dean, and punctuates with a laser-fine coil of actinic power so bright that Sam twitches away, even behind the shade of Jack’s wings. 

Lucifer cackles, high and wild and deranged. “Michael can’t kill me, sweetheart! I’m all juiced up, unlike you. Nephilim grace, baby, better than ‘roids!”

Dean smiles. “No? Well, guess what? Michael’s got his Sword. Unlike you.” He steps forward, wielding raw grace with relentless, inescapable precision, to the accompaniment of thunderous booms and brief flashes of lethal nuclear spillover. 

Thrust-feint-thrust, and Lucifer reels back. There’s blood on his vessel’s face. He touches it incredulously. 

Dean presses his advantage, and _impossibly_ , inexorably, Lucifer stumbles back and back. His blows become furious and desperate, the swipes and roars of a caged tiger, until Dean’s focusing all Michael’s effort on deflecting the wild screaming energy, keeping it contained. Boxing Lucifer in, further and further.

Sam’s breathing hard. His disbelief is harsh and raspy in his own ears. Lucifer is _losing._

Under the shelter of Jack’s wings, Sam brushes a patch of floor clean of broken glass. He snatches up a jagged shard, slices open his palm, and begins to draw.

Abruptly, the shrieking tinnitus of raw power cuts out. Sam looks up. Lucifer’s panting, hair ruffled and streaked with blood. Dean’s teeth are bared in a grin of pure murder. 

Lucifer looks over at Sam and Jack, sheltered in the corner, licks his lips, but keeps backing away carefully. “Uh, this has been great. Quality entertainment, thanks. Course, you’ve ruined my son, and I won’t forget that, but we can table it for when my big brother isn’t around to ruin the fun. Be seeing you, Sam.”

“No, NO, you fucker!” screams Dean, because he sees what Sam sees, Lucifer’s energy pooling, his lip curling, his wings bunching to fly.

Sam slams his bloody hand down on the sigil. Lets the power of the inverted banishment flood the room, making both archangels shudder. Should hold for a minute. 

“You’re not leaving,” says Sam. His voice echoes in the stunned, dim quiet.

Lucifer freezes, then laughs incredulously. “Somebody got two scoops of self-esteem in his Raisin Bran this morning. Trapping _me_? A little optimistic, don’t you think—” 

He’s raising his hand to snap his fingers, but Dean is faster, flinging out an arm and knocking him back against the altar. 

“This is over,” says Sam. He stands, helping Jack stumble upright, wings tucked safely away. 

He walks to the center of the church. The patterns in the marble are ruined, cream and blue and red warped and twisted and blackened. His footsteps seem very loud on the stone. 

Lucifer’s glance darts between them, all three of them, at the symbol on the ground, and he laughs again, this time to cover a bolt of trapped panic. “Uh, yeah, sure it is. Sam, where’d we go wrong, huh?”

Dean stares at him. He’s not moving, not saying anything, just holding out his arm, but Sam can feel the exertion, the steady white-hot flow of Michael’s razor-honed power pinning Lucifer down. Dean’s whole body trembles slightly with the effort. 

Lucifer’s eyes are pale and glittering. He’s struggling, gasping for breath. “Oh, man, this is rich. You can’t even get revenge right! Need Dean to hold your hand!”

Sam leans down and picks up the archangel blade. The scrape-slide of metal over stone is deafening. He rolls its weight in his hand, feeling the most recent cut on his palm, over the old scar, stretch and burn. 

“Are you gonna beg?” Sam asks quietly. 

Lucifer snorts, a little hysterical. Shocky. “Nah, I don’t look great on my knees. That’s more your thing.”

Sam nods. “I told you I’d kill you,” he says. 

His limbs tingle. All the blood and adrenaline has drained away. 

He tosses the blade to Dean. 

Lucifer talks, rapid-fire. “Hey. Wait, listen. I know what you want, Sam. You want it to end, you want to rest. I can give you that. You think Dean would ever give you that? No more pain. No more resurrections. Just a white light and dreamless sleep.” 

Dean glances back at Sam. Something passes between them; a question, an answer. A fierce sweet ache pulses through Sam’s chest. It feels real. 

His brother steps forward.

Lucifer’s still talking. “Jack, I can fix this. I can make it all better, man. We can start over.”

Jack just looks at him. Dean grabs Lucifer’s hair. 

Lucifer’s eyes snap back to Sam’s. “Hey, no, hey, Sam, okay, fine, if you want revenge, do you really want to give me the peace of the grave? Don’t you wanna take your time, Sam, _no wait NO_ —”

Dean drives the blade home. 

Lucifer _screams._ Red-white fire erupts from from his eyes and mouth, and a flare of force and heat and light bursts outward, a concussive ripple. 

Dean stumbles away, covering his face. Sam’s eyes stream with involuntary tears but he forces them open, keeps them open, puts a hand up for shade, keeps looking. 

Lucifer burns and screams and burns, shuddering, head thrown back, jerking as fiery light consumes him from the inside out. 

The sparking ruins of huge, horrible wings flash once, like a bright afterimage, and then Lucifer collapses, strings cut. He does not move. Blood leaks from his chest. The black ashes of feathers are seared into the ground.

“Is he…” That’s Jack, hushed and unsure. 

“He… he’s dead,” murmurs Sam. 

He raises his head, his stinging eyes, to meet Dean’s astonishment. 

“Holy fuck,” says Dean. “We did it.”

Sam stares at him, then at Jack, and they’re both smiling, eyes shining, and Sam hunches. Buckles, just a little. A wave of something too sheer and extreme to be called relief forces out his breath in a gasping, wheezing, incredulous laugh. 

Some faraway kid’s forgotten, impossible dream is alive. Some precious thing broken and lost long, long ago is remembered. 

Dean doubles over, grunting in pain, and with an icy blast of renewed panic Sam remembers they’re not alone. 

“Dean?” he whispers. 

“We had a deal!” Dean yells, choked and frantic. 

Michael straightens back up. 

Calm, composed, cold. 

“Thanks for the suit.”


	5. EPILOGUE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sam, and Rowena, and a corpse, in a church. Featuring: a large special effects budget, and Sam talking to people.

Jack’s head rests on Sam’s shoulder, Sam’s arm curled around his back. The stone steps are smooth, a welcome coolness in the muggy night air. 

The church sits on a narrow, dilapidated dirt road. Not much to see in either direction, just rolling fields and a few barns. 

The moon is bright. It’s quiet, just the vaguest rustle of wind. 

No buzz of crickets. And that’s another thing—the swath of death surrounding the church, withered vegetation flattened outward from ground zero. Sam can’t tell precisely how far out it goes. He squints out at the distant shapes of barns—maybe farmhouses as well—and his heart cringes away from the thought of checking. 

Right now he can’t think about Dean and he can’t wonder how many people got caught in the lethal fallout that finally finished it. Right now it’s just him and Jack and the faint sticky breeze and the body in the church.

Headlights cut through the night. Jack and Sam get to their feet as a big black SUV rattles up the road. It looks expensive, all sleek leather and gleaming chrome, but it’s caked in dust from the tiny backcountry lane. 

The car rumbles to a stop. There’s no driveway, but there’s an area that could generously be called a parking lot—a wide flat patch of dirt, overgrown and choked with crumbling black weeds. 

Charlie hops out, beams and waves. “Hear you smoked Satan! Guess that makes you a pretty big frickin’ deal, huh?” 

This might not be his Charlie, but her irrepressible grin still loosens something in his chest. 

“Uh, yeah,” says Sam, with a smile that feels alien. “Do you have a first aid kit?” Jack’s wound is half-healed, but it still needs stitches.

Charlie nods, goes to rummage in the trunk. 

Rowena unfolds from the passenger side and marches straight up to Sam. She’s wearing a dress several shades more practical than her usual attire and carrying a huge leather handbag. Probably designer. Her makeup is, as usual, extravagant and impeccable. 

“Where is he?” she asks, unsmiling. 

Sam gestures inside. 

Jack looks between them. “What are you going to do?” he asks.

Sam doesn’t know. “Jack, Charlie’s gonna stitch you up, okay?”

Charlie tosses a thumbs up from where she’s still digging through the trunk. 

For a second, Sam’s afraid he’s going to protest, but Jack just glances in the church one last time and swallows. “Okay,” he says, quiet and heavy with exhaustion. He’s barely spoken since it happened.

Sam gives Jack a brief smile and squeezes his arm. Then he and Rowena go inside. 

 

* * *

 

They close the doors behind them. It’s dim, but the moonlight through the shattered glass is enough.  


Rowena makes a low, guttural sound when she sees the body. “Oh, yes,” she hisses. “Oh, my, yes.” She leans over and taps the tip of one manicured nail to the vessel’s forehead. 

“Dead as doornails,” she pronounces, cheerily. She sets down the handbag, which gives an ominous clank. “Now, let’s make sure it sticks with a wee curse, yes?" 

“What about him?” Sam’s looking at the corpse. 

Rowena raises one perfectly arched eyebrow. 

“The vessel, I mean. Nick.” Sam doesn’t know his last name. Lucifer didn’t either. 

“You’re concerned about some long-dead husk at a time like this?”

Sam pinches his lips together, gives her a dry unamused look.   

She rolls her eyes dramatically. “ _Fine_. I promise, this spell is custom-tailored, Lucifer only. That poor sot won’t twitch in his grave. Does that meet with your delicate sensibilities?”

Sam just nods.

Rowena unclasps her bag. “Lovely. Now, stand back and do try not to break anything.”

 

 

The first thing she does is set out candles. There are dozens, some squat and misshapen, others elegantly carved into sinuous forms, and Rowena flicks her fingers to ignite each wick until the room is awash with flickering orange light.  

She takes out handfuls of tiny dull-white crystals—Sam’s betting they’re something a little more exotic than quartz—and places them to trace the edges of the burnt-out wings. Crime scene outline, Sam thinks giddily. 

Then, Rowena begins to draw. There are layers and layers of interlocking runes—Enochian, Aramaic, Norse, Sanskrit. More. Petroglyphs and Celtic knots and cuneiform, all rendered with the familiarity of centuries. Sam doesn’t recognize half. 

It’s done in chalk and powder and carvings and paint, to start, but soon, Rowena’s using bare fingers to sketch lines of golden mist that hang suspended in three-dimensional arcs, densely braided. She arranges hovering prisms to bend beams of candlelight into complex geometries. She lays out tiny tuning forks that begin to vibrate of their own accord, humming in an eerie, mounting harmony. She wafts incense and burns fragrant herbs in dizzying looping coils, scent upon scent upon scent until the pattern is inescapable. 

At some point, Rowena begins to sing, voice rising and falling in a hypnotic wailing chant that makes Sam’s pulse thunder in his ears. Some Gaelic dialect, at a guess. Her head throws back, eyes rolled back to whites, red hair tumbled and glowing like fire, arms out, swaying side to side, and she steps into a dance. _Thump_ , _thump_ , _thump-thump,_ slow, feet moving in odd angular patterns, then faster, smoother, whirling, and she’s an otherworldly creature, fey and ancient and inescapable as death.

She’s weaving the pieces of the spell together until Sam can feel it with a sixth sense on top of the other five: a dense, dark knot of ghastly power building and gnashing and  _building_ , rhythmically pushing to some nauseous crescendo.  

No hedge-magic, this. Sam stands and watches and tastes the sharp, high note of the gathering maelstrom. Outside the broken windows, the moon rises higher. 

Rowena stills, stops her song. The spell quivers, thrums, and settles. The knotted curse roiling above the body is so vivid and furious and ravenous that Sam imagines he can  _see_  it—a chained nightmare hound screaming for blood, the unnamable maw of a black hole waiting to be set loose. 

Rowena sighs, long and breathy, and lowers her arms. There’s a thin tremor through her limbs, and her face shines with sweat. “There, now,” she murmurs, “there, there, sweet thing, not long now.”

She dabs gently at her forehead, retreats to her bag to retrieve a paintbrush, a pair of scissors, and a small jar of something thick and red. 

She strides back to the body, kneels over it, twists her hand in a strange direction Sam’s eyes can’t quite follow, and she’s suddenly holding a long burnt feather, huge and black and crumbling. She stuffs it into the jar. It crumbles apart like ash, and whatever’s inside flashes a sickly red. 

Rowena carefully sets the jar on the floor, then cuts open the jacket and ruined white shirt.

There’s a weird uncomfortable thrill that pulses through Sam as she rips the fabric away to bare the torso completely. A wrongness, a fearful break in protocol; a flip of anticipation and terror. The universe has tilted on its axis, and Sam feels an exposed, sick, coiling weight: half terrible vulnerability, half something else. Something shameful and hungry. He curls his toes and rubs his suddenly sweating palms on his jeans.

Rowena dips her brush. Sam steps forward carefully. Bends low and lays a hand on her arm. Asks, quietly, “Do you want help?” 

She looks up at him, nostrils flared and knuckles white on her brush, and for a moment Sam thinks she’s going to refuse. 

Then, her pressed-tight lips break into a sly smile. “I don’t let just anyone handle my paints, you know. But I suppose I could make an exception, for a tall man.”

She gets Sam a second brush. Together, Sam mirroring her marks, they draw crimson symbols over the eyes, hands, mouth, heart. 

Rowena clicks her fingers and snaps in Latin: “ _Inure_ , _cateno_ , _vinculo_ , _adnullo_!” The substance flashes white hot, then sinks hissing into the skin as angry red brands seared black at the edges. 

They withdraw. Sam screws the jar shut and puts it back near the handbag. Above the body, the waiting curse still shudders and howls and throbs its hunger.

Rowena mutters for awhile over a large wooden bowl, adding ingredients one at a time. Sam sees needles, razors, tiny bones, sulfur, wormwood. More herbs he can’t identify. Something small and furred. Burdock, yew, belladonna. A wisp of something white that seems to be drawn from the air itself. Hellebore, aconite. A flower with livid blue petals. A hoof. A pinch of a substance that glows a violent orange. A shimmering silver thread, gossamer-fine.

She sets down the bowl and pulls a necklace out from beneath the neckline of her dress—a simple chain with a smooth gray stone, flat and utterly unremarkable, fist-sized. Without a visible flicker of power, the chain vanishes. Eyes glowing a faint violet, Rowena tips back her head, holds the stone over her heart, and squeezes. Blood wells and drips between her clenched fingers, darkening to a viscous black ichor that dribbles down her forearms and into the bowl. As it touches the contents, they flare in bright purple light, then melt together into a slimy dark oil.  

Finally, Rowena stands. She steps forward, clutching the bowl—then she pauses, turns back, and offers it to Sam. “If you would do the honors?” 

Sam, surprised, takes it. “You mean I—don’t you want to?”

“Oh, Samuel, I very much do. But magic runs on more than raw power." She smiles, vulpine, but it’s strained. This is costing her something. “I rather suspect this curse will be a wee bit stronger if  _you’re_  the one to yank the final lever.”

"What do I have to do?" Sam asks. The substance in the bowl is writhing gently. 

She flicks a lock of red hair back over her shoulder and looks Sam straight in the eye. "Just think of him, say his name, and toss the potion over the body.”

Okay. He can do that.

Sam says “Lucifer,” and looks into the bowl. 

Nothing seems to change. Maybe the cool wood warms slightly. 

He glances back at Rowena, who purses her lips impatiently. “Try a  _little_  harder than that, please, or I’ll be taking the bowl back.”

He closes his eyes, this time, thinks a bit more. 

The first time they met: the shape of Jess in Sam’s bed. Saying yes: grace and sublime agony, a reflection in a cracked mirror. In the Cage: his habits, his tells, his creativity; his likes and dislikes, his true face; the wretched petty scale of him, simultaneously mundane and vast. Sam’s gorge rises on a wave of terror and violation and loathing and helplessness.

_Lucifer_ , Sam thinks. 

“ _Lucifer_ ,” Sam says. 

The bowl is instantly blisteringly hot. He tosses the oil. 

As soon as the liquid touches the corpse, the trapped curse explodes forth in a towering column of boiling light and sound, a ravenous white-phosphorus creature with too many mouths. He and Rowena are blasted backward, skidding across the marble. 

The curse screams and rips and burns, lashing and howling like a wild animal. Its flesh is made of heat and blinding hatred. Sam watches until he’s finally forced to screw his eyes shut and cover his face. 

The light vanishes. 

“What was that,” Charlie’s voice, “Are you okay,” Jack’s. The two of them stand stock-still in the open doorway, staring at the thick plume of purple-white smoke gently curling up through a wide, jagged hole in the church’s roof. 

There’s no rubble. The ceiling has apparently  _vaporized_. 

“We’re fine, Jack,” gasps Sam. He staggers back to his feet, rubbing at his eyes. The afterimage of that many-limbed thing is still seared in, as bright as Lucifer’s death throes. He blinks away tears. He should invest in some eclipse glasses if he wants to keeps staring directly at supernatural phenomena. 

Rowena, quickly recovering from any trace of fluster, stands with a dancer’s grace and shakes soot from her gown. “ _That_ , my dear, is the kind of result you get when sheer talent is garnished with the proper catalyst.” 

She coughs delicately, brushes back a bit of singed hair, and waves a hand. The remaining smoke instantly dissipates, and she points at the spot where the corpse had lain. 

There’s a huge black scorch mark on the ground. No trace of the body at all, no trace of wings. The aftertaste of ozone and static Sam associates with grace is utterly gone from the air.

"Trust me,” says Rowena, voice low and dark and vicious, “ _trust me_ , if anyone or anything tried to bring that one back, he’d zing right back into his grave. But not without  _feeling_ it first.”

 

* * *

 

Rowena’s still packing up and Jack’s back to sitting on the steps, so Sam goes to the car to help himself to the first aid kit.

He’s pretty achy—might have some residual internal damage for Cas to check out—but it’s nothing life-threatening. The only wound still left open is the slash on his left hand, so he cleans and stitches it. 

He hasn’t done the palm thing in awhile. The scar is still there, ropy and faded, now scored over with the fresh cut, but there hasn’t been much point. Since Lucifer stuck Cas’s hand in his chest, it’s been less a grounding tool ( _this is real_ ), more an unfriendly reminder ( _you’re out and so is he_ ).  

Now it feels right, to run a nail along the hard ridge of tissue that never healed right, twisted and picked open over and over. It feels like a victory. It’s still here, and so is Sam. 

A lot of things are feeling like victory. 

“Gnarly scar, dude.” Charlie’s voice makes Sam jump and nearly drop the used alcohol swap. 

“Broken glass,” Sam explains. He grabs a bandage. 

There’s a pause, as Sam finishes and closes the first aid kit. Charlie shifts, foot to foot, tucks a sheaf of red hair behind her ear. “So, I figured you were probably worried about the AOE damage.” 

“AOE?”

“Sorry, area of effect. I mean, how far out the circle of death went.” Charlie’s still smiling, but it’s edged with weary grimness.

Sam’s heart drops. He waits for the blow.

“About a mile,” says Charlie seriously. “We saw a few homes.“

“Oh.” 

“Not very many,” says Charlie. 

Sam nods mutely. 

“It’s incredible, actually,” says Charlie. “In our world, most of Kansas got turned into a smoking crater.”

“It was Dean.” Sam sounds hoarse. He clears his throat. “It would have been worse, except that Dean—” He stops.

“I’m so sorry, Sam.” Charlie’s eyes are soft and gentle and understanding. Sympathetic. And Sam remembers that she barely knows Dean. 

“We’ll get him back,” says Sam.

She pinches her lips together and nods. Sam doesn’t blame her for not believing him.

 

* * *

 

Sam drops back onto the steps, next to Jack. “How’s the stomach?”

It looks like some of the shock has worn off. Jack’s using a stick to scrape at a crack in the stone. “Fine. Why didn’t you tell me?”

Oh. That was quick. Sam was, well, hoping to put off this conversation, for a day or so. Or indefinitely. He considers saying _tell you what_?, but discards the idea as both insulting and unlikely to work. 

Jack deserves an answer. 

“You’re a kid,” explains Sam. “Lucifer isn’t—he shouldn’t have been your problem. You shouldn’t ever have met him."

Jack keeps prodding with his twig, won’t look up. “But then I did meet him.” 

Sam lets out a careful breath. “Yeah.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me then? When he brought you back to camp?”

Sam swallows. “It’s complicated,” he hears himself say. It’s not, really. 

Jack twists the stick against the step in a particularly vicious motion. It snaps. 

“I’m so sorry,” Jack says suddenly, and then he’s hunching over and words are rushing out of him, like a dam has broken. “It’s my fault, I let him into the bunker, I’m sorry, I trusted him, it’s my fault he hurt you. He hurt you, I couldn’t stop him, I’m so _sorry_ —”

“No, no, Jack, it’s not your fault—” 

“And now I won’t be able to protect you,” says Jack thickly. “I can’t fight Michael like this. I can’t save Dean.”

Sam pats his back. “Hey, no. It’s okay. I don’t want you fighting Michael.” Jack’s collapsed almost double, face buried in his hands. That has to be hurting his wound. “Jack, sit up, alright?”

After a moment, Jack allows Sam to tug him upright and check the stitches. They’re fine. 

Jack’s not crying, but his eyes are glassy and miserable and unfocused. “My grace was a part of _him_. Maybe it’s better that he cut it out of me.”

Sam’s stomach flips. A dense, heavy weight settles in his chest. “No. No, Jack, it’s yours. Just yours, and we’ll get it back.”

“Maybe I don’t want it back,” says Jack softly. He still hasn’t met Sam’s eyes. “You were so afraid of me. I know why, now.”

Sam can’t say anything to that. Mouth dry, he rubs Jack’s shoulders in silence.

 

* * *

 

The SUV is huge and comfortable and blessedly climate-controlled, with three rows of plush leather seats. Jack’s curled up lengthways in the back, long asleep from the exhaustion and pain and adrenaline crash. Charlie’s driving, earbuds in. Rowena’s wearing a sleep mask in the front seat, but Sam’s positive she’s still awake.

He leans forward. 

“How long did you have that spell ready?” he asks softly. 

“ _Months_ , dear,” Rowena murmurs. “And it took months of toil to design, before that. Not to mention collecting the ingredients. It wasn’t easy to get dragon’s blood, or the hearts of nine seas, or—well, you get the idea.”

She shifts and smoothes down a fold of her dress.

“He deserved something special,” she says finally.  

“Yeah,” says Sam. He sits back. 

They’re both quiet for another few miles. 

“Did he suffer?” asks Rowena. 

Sam pictures, for the thousandth time, the blazing light, the scream as Lucifer burned alive from the inside out. “No.” 

“Pity,” says Rowena. She adjusts her mask. 

Sam goes back to looking out the window. 

The wedding ring still sits cool and heavy in his pocket. When they get back to the Bunker, he and Cas will burn it. Nick deserves a proper funeral.

And of course, while Sam’s been having his grand emotional catharsis or whatever, Dean’s been suffering. The worst part of all this is that even knowing exactly what kind of hell Dean’s going through, Sam feels _good_. God help him, even as he curdles with the guilt, he feels better than he has in years. He’d forgotten what hope tastes like. 

There’s Rowena, there’s Jack, there’s Cas. There’s Mom and Bobby and Charlie. 

Together, they’ll fix this. They’ll find Dean, and they’ll blast Michael away. 

Then maybe they can retire to the Bahamas, like Dean wanted. Get old and rundown and achy, let their bodies start to catch up to their souls. Die, at last, on a beach somewhere, drinking cheap beer in the sun.

There’s more to do. There’s always more to do. But right now, outside the windows of a black car speeding north, dawn’s coming.

For the first time in a long time, Sam imagines an ending.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and the 13.23 rewrite is a wrap, folks! Thanks for reading! Now back to my (ir)regularly scheduled longfic...
> 
> If you have a thought, drop me a comment :D

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!
> 
> (I also am on the [tumblesphere](https://katsidhe.tumblr.com/))


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